


so I dub thee unforgiven

by moon_waves



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Background Relationships, Drama, Gen, Introspection, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 07:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19848121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_waves/pseuds/moon_waves
Summary: Her old skin had gone down in flames in the Potomac, and she had heard Europe calling, again, the urge to remake herself too strong to ignore.





	so I dub thee unforgiven

**o.**

Her skin goes down in flames in the Potomac and she feels the urge to leave the USA to remake herself, vast lands of forests and old cities of stones calling for her, enticing whispers in the deep of the night.

**i.**

She goes to Europe to create herself anew – one identity, or ten – and sort her thoughts out. Seeing the Winter Soldier again – trying to kill Steve, nonetheless – was unexpected, and with everything that happened, she didn’t have the time to fully register what it meant.

But she does now.

And the Red Room lurks around.

**ii.**

She hasn’t told anyone the entire truth about the Winter Soldier, not even Clint. Steve doesn’t know that she knew him, too. All he knows is that she worked for Mother Russia, before, and then turned around, working for Fury (not quite SHIELD, and never again now).

They don’t know the entire truth about her training, how young she started _(there are no children here, Natalia)_ and who helped training her into what she came to be.

The Winter Soldier is a ghost story, famous for his kills – everything else is lost to the sands of time.

Fury and Clint know about the Red Room, but nothing more. Some parts of her past are better left alone – ghosts not to be disturbed, especially when they turn out not to be quite so dead, after all.

**iii.**

She creates herself, once again. Europe is the best place for that, and Budapest is beautiful at this time of the year. Natasha Romanoff only disappears to reappear somewhere else, unexpected.

Anew.

Rebuilt from fire.

She kills five assassins sent to kill her in the first three weeks and then is left alone.

The message is understood for those who live in the shadows.

**iv.**

Rain falls down in London and she goes sight-seeing between two appointments, trying to fit the pieces of her past together. There is what she left in New-York, and what she left in Moscow, and the great vastness between the two cities, years and years and numerous bleeding shadows on the ground.

She keeps an ear to the ground and loses herself into the city before going north, the call of the snow too much to ignore now.

What she felt, what she knew and what she showed – and all that for which she might never be forgiven.

**v.**

She might remake herself, but she cannot cut out her conscience any more than she can cut out her shadow.

**vi.**

Clint calls her and seems terrified.

The Winter Soldier is open game and there is no care for collateral damages.

She has to go back – can’t let her friend get killed like that, after all.

**vii.**

Steve is a mess, and Sam isn’t much better – and none of them does a good job of hiding it when she sits across them in a restaurant in New-Orleans.

He is at the end of his rope, that much is clear – running himself to the ground, and she is sure it would be worse if Sam wasn’t around to remind him to live, too. Still, there is only so much he can do – so much any of them can do, because this isn’t something you learn through a tour (or more).

They both need a break, and she isn’t opposed to a change in her routine – especially not when it means helping a friend in need.

Steve’s hands are shaking until she holds them – and his grip is still strong, despite everything.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” he whispers, and she smiles, gently.

He might be a brilliant strategist, but there are many things he doesn’t know – about the lure of darkness, and how impossible it is to find someone at home within shadows, when you haven’t learned to be one.

“You let me take care of it,” she tells him.

**viii.**

It doesn’t take her a lot of time to get coordinates on James B. Barnes – well, not long according to her standards, knowing she is looking for another shadow of the Red Room. He is in the middle of breaking free from his programming, and it makes him sloppy.

It would be easy for her to get rid off him, if she felt so inclined.

**ix.**

Berlin is a nest of spies, but it’s the perfect place to start a chase there – tease her target with what might come, who might come, and see who of Barnes or the Winter Soldier comes out.

**x.**

It’s almost too easy – but Steve has been looking for Barnes for months before she took matters in her own hands, tiring him more than she had suspected, at first.

From that point, it’s easy to lead Barnes back to New York City, and drop him onto Steve’s territory.

**xi.**

She sticks around for a few weeks, making sure Steve isn’t blinded by his feelings and won’t get murdered in the middle of the night, before stepping away.

Sam is settling back into his own life, too, and she has a few visits to make while she is there – Tony and Pepper and Rhodey, Maria, Fury.

Clint.

Her arrow necklace is a comforting weight around her neck, and she feels more comfortable in her (new?) skin by the time she is done _seeing the sights_.

**xii.**

She leaves afterwards – there is still red on her ledger, and she wants to wipe it out.

 _You don’t owe it to the world to destroy yourself trying to make amends_ , Clint’s voice whispers in her ear, but it isn’t quite that. There is something else in the air, and she can feel a storm brewing.

The kind of storm her teachers in the Red Room used to whisper about, to scare them. Prepare them. Tease them.

And no one catches the Black Widow unprepared.

**xiii.**

She works better in the shadows anyway – the sun and the glory might be all well and dandy for the two medias’ darlings that Steve and Tony are, but she isn’t made from the same mold. Espionage belongs to darkness – of the streets, of the world, of the nature of human souls – and she has learned not to fight its call, over the years.

She might be a SHIELD agent, but she remains an agent double at heart.

Fury knows it all too well, and turns a blind eye to her side-activities, knowing when to push and when to pull.

There are webs to weave and threads to untangle.

**xiv.**

HYDRA has numerous heads, and maybe numerous bodies as well – but it lacks the soul required to survive in Russia, once its agents are cut down.

She trails a few remaining cells slowly, intimately, through Eastern Europe before making her way back to the Motherland. There is business waiting for her here – pieces of her past slowly reappearing, when she thought she had left it all behind, all those years ago.

There is a new spider taunting her, dangling on a thread in front of her, but she won’t rush to it.

The chase is better than the catch, after all.

**xv.**

Yelena Belova is a worthy opponent – and one who learned the true lessons of the Red Room, too.

There are worse ways to go.

**xvi.**

There is only one Black Widow, but there is enough place in the world for another itsy-bitsy spider, should she feel so inclined to sculpt her own identity.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos to you if you picked on the musical Easter egg :)  
> Hope you enjoyed it, please let me know what you thought of it :)


End file.
